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Title: Eyewitness Travel Guide to Madrid by Adam Hopkins, Dorling Kindersley Publishing, D K Publishing ISBN: 0-7894-4179-9 Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.88 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Travel Guide, Beautiful Coffee Table Book!
Comment: .
Summary:
Every Dorling Kindersley Guide has been a great and interesting book... and delightful to have and use, even if you are not traveling to that location, but are only interested in learning more!
The Guides are well organized in a logical and easy to follow manner. They are beautifully illustrated, well developed with accurate information (it is unusual for hotel and restaurant information to be that accurate), have enough history to help the reader understand the people and cultural background, and have a lot of useful travel information and useable maps in the appendixes.
The really great attraction to this book is several fold; it is:
............Very complete
............Easy to read
............Beautifully and artistically completed
............Good shopping, safety and other tips
............Gorgeous photographs too numerous to list.
Specifics:
The guides are organized as follows:
How to use this guide
Introduction to Historical and Geographical information
Geographical Regions
Introduction to Madrid
............Putting Madrid on the Map
............History of Madrid
............Madrid at a Glance
............Madrid Through the Year
............Madrid Area by Area, each section includes:
........................Introduction to street by street area
........................Detailed pictorials of area buildings
........................Architectural drawings, pictures, cut-aways of buildings
........................Specific stops, historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc.
Madrid Sections Reviewed:
........................Old Madrid
........................Bourbon Madrid
........................Around La Castellana
........................Further Afield
........................Beyond Madrid
Travelers Needs - includes full list with rankings and notes
............Hotels
............Restaurants, cafes, bars
............Shopping
............Entertainment
............Outdoor activities
Survival Information
............Practical
........................Tourist info., Etiquete, Personal Security and Health
........................Currencies, Telephones, misc info.
............Travel Information (Getting to Madrid )
............Street Maps (Getting Around Madrid )
............General Index
............Phrase Book
Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing Madrid", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and Madrid thought the Year - including events, etc.
Areas with an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of specific blocks, or forums, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc.
Architectural reviews include various views, and cutaways; given greater understanding and better perspective. They are all attractive, if not works of art - honestly.
The travelers' Info. offers good and valid info. on prices, currencies, customs, important words, etc. I have used the reviews on hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, in most European cities, and Dorling has yet to disappoint me. I have found they were useful and accurate, and helpful with my touring and site decisions.
The books are so well thought-out that it has multiple maps, with various lookup tables, and the book's flaps are designed to be used as bookmarks for map pages.
Negative:
The only negative with this book is that it is substantial with good quality paper, and is therefore heavier than other travel books.
Conclusion:
Each book in this series is a great help, and beautiful collectible resource. As the President, CEO of an International Meeting Planning Corporation we have many resources and techniques to learn about places we have meetings / groups at as well as the cities and sights. But, as a traveler, this book really is top notch and I would recommend it to anyone going on a personal trip, or wanting to learn about a city, or location. We have used some of these books to augment our research to investigate cities for our groups.
Rating: 4
Summary: An attractive guide, but could be more useful.
Comment: I spent two days in Madrid in November 2002 with this guidebook. I found it to be well-organized and readable, with photos accompanying the text. With this guide, it didn't take long to gain a basic understanding of the history of the city and the different neighborhoods. The restaurant listings were particularly helpful.
There were two downsides, in my opinion. One is that there is no pull-out map. The map pages are integrated with the rest of the book. Second, the prices in the book are given in pesetas, not in Euros. I found that hotels, restaurants, etc. were all quoting prices in Euros, making the guidebook slightly less user-friendly. Still, the printed prices seemed to give a good idea of relative cost.
Overall, a good guidebook, but be sure to pick up a map when you arrive in Madrid.
Rating: 5
Summary: Madrid Guidebooks Compared
Comment: I am an experienced traveler (30+ countries) who is nearing retirement and plan to travel extensively, who has recently become obsessed about finding "good" guidebooks. So this review is a comparison of the books I looked at for Madrid.
I started with the Insight Guide. I was seeking to get background, history, etc. The Insight Guides seem to vary enormously from one to the next in both quality and orientation. I think they are good for an entire country if you are trying to decide where in the country or what parts you want to see. I thought the guide for Madrid was useless. It provided very little information about the city or the culture. It seemed to be best if you were planning on moving to Madrid and wanted to find out the differences between the various suburban areas. I suggest you forget this one.
I looked at the Mini-Rough Guide. I didn't like the format and it was too terse for my taste. In my opinion, Rough Guide still needs to produce a guide for Madrid that is a regular, not a mini Rough Guide. The LP Guide to Madrid seemed pretty mediocre. The stiff covers also made it awkward to use or hold open to a particular page. The information and descriptions were inadequate compared to some other guides. The Eyewitness Guide to Madrid is, I think, the best overall guide to Madrid. (Generally I prefer Eyewitness guides for City's much more than as a guide for an entire country.) The maps are good, the pictures of the food and other items are very helpful. The hotels and restaurant sections were pretty good, but not great. If you are looking for hostels, you will need the LP guide. Eyewitness does not give great historical depth, but it gives you some, probably enough for most tourists. Guide Books are not the best source for detailed historical and cultural information anyway. The Time Out guide was almost like a tourist's yellow pages, primarily a listing of hotels, restaurants, sites, services, etc. It had the best listing of restaurants and hotels and covered all price ranges. It wasn't as good as Eyewitness is describing the things to see and do.
I ended up getting the Eyewitness Guide to use while sightseeing, supplemented by the Time Out Guide for picking hotels, restaurants and being able to look up things. Another reviewer recommended this same combination in order to visit Tapas bars. I'm not that much into Tapas, but I still think these two are the best combo. Eyewitness is not perfect, but it's the best one that I saw.
Incidentally, the Spain Rough and LP guides Madrid sections do not cover Madrid as well as the Madrid-only guides. You are looking at a 60-page section, compared to the Madrid-only guides of around 300 pages length.
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Title: Time Out Madrid (Time Out Madrid, 5th Ed) by Time Out, Penguin Books ISBN: 0141008377 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides: Barcelona (Eyewitness Travel Top 10) by Annelise Sorensen, Ryan Chandler ISBN: 0789484323 Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Streetwise Madrid by Streetwise Maps, Michael Brown ISBN: 0935039635 Publisher: Streetwise Maps Pub. Date: 01 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Spain (Eyewitness Travel Guides) by DK Publishing ISBN: 0789493888 Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Barcelona & Catalonia (Eyewitness Travel Guides) by Roger Williams ISBN: 0789494310 Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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